The Words of In Jin Moon from 2010
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The Words of In Jin Moon from 2010 |
On the morning of June 20, 2010, Lovin' Life Ministries Senior Pastor Rev. In Jin Moon spoke to congregants, which included participants of the Il-Shim Ceremony to take place that day, about the static that we can be hit with while walking down our road to self-discovery. After sharing about her own experiences in middle school, as well as a review of the movie: Little Miss Sunshine, it was expressed that the truly "cool" thing to do in life is to be your own person. Also, throughout this journey, the most important message parents can give to their children is to let them know it doesn't matter how much static they might encounter, "We, your father and mother and family, will always be there for you."
Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone this Sunday? It's so good to see you again.
I see that there are lots of young faces here. I sense a little bit from the atmosphere that maybe quite a few of you were not too thrilled about waking up early and coming into the city, but I'm very happy that you came.
Here at the Manhattan Center we recently held a very beautiful and important event celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Korean War. We had the Little Angels with us. The Little Angels are truly great ambassadors for the country of Korea. Ever since our True Parents founded the Little Angels in 1962 and they started their first tour in 1965, they have really graced the world stage, bringing the beauty of Korea and artistry of song and dance to many dignitaries in many countries all around the world.
They are children ranging in age from 9 to 15, and you sometimes have to wonder: These are not professional dancers in the sense that that's all they do. They go to school, they work hard, and they will go to the best universities. But in the meantime they pursue their passion, which is song and dance. Through their artistry, they have a chance to represent their country of Korea on the world stage.
They are here in America as part of a thank-you tour to the 16 countries that sent troops as the Allied Forces that helped liberate our True Father from Hungnam prison many years ago. It was these Allied Forces that allowed Korea to be the kind of country that it is today, enjoying prosperity, democracy, and freedom. It's really because these young men and women gave up their lives fighting for freedom and democracy, fighting against communism.
I was commenting to my kids, "Mommy would not be here had it not been for those old men you see being honored on stage. These old veterans who need help to come on stage to receive their award of gratitude -- many of them with canes, some of them who can barely stand -- these men allowed me to exist because they saved my father." How indebted we need to be to this great country of America that allowed us the opportunity to have a life, an opportunity to raise a family and experience what building an ideal family is all about.
As I was watching the Little Angels perform, I came to realize once again how beautiful the Korean culture is. Korean dance is very different from, for instance, Japanese dance, in which the movements are almost minimal and very delicate. In Korean dance, the women are leaping and banging on the drums. I was thinking to myself, no wonder Korea was so attractive to all the surrounding countries. Japan and China kept invading Korea to take Korean women.
While watching, I was thinking how exciting this kind of dance must have been in the Victorian age, when people were excited to see a woman's ankles, and here are Korean women dancing up a storm (you can certainly see their ankles!) and in bright colors, with movements that are free and dynamic.
Father has often said that you can tell a lot about a particular culture when you watch its dances. South American dances, salsa, tango, are a very sensual type of dance. Korean dances are very passionate, dynamic, and action-oriented. This image of the Asian woman being a very coy, docile being gets thrown offstage when you see these beautiful, dynamic dances that represent the culture of Korea.
Yes, Korean women respect our elders, and yes, we are very mindful of our tradition. But we are very passionate people, and we're very dynamic people. I can see why the True Mother of humankind came from the country of Korea. When I think about my mother, she looks like an elegant wallflower, but beneath that elegance runs a volcano. She's quite a passionate woman. A lot of people think she doesn't have much to say, but when she says what she wants to say, she has quite a bit to say. The things that she says are quite profound. One can always garner so much wisdom from the little that she does share with the family.
Here we have our True parents with us, living and breathing with us. I think a lot of Second Generation, young ones in the audience who were dragged by their parents to come this morning, must be wondering, "What's all the excitement about True Parents? They're just two Asian people. One is well into his 90s, and they look like a beautiful, happy couple, but what's so special about them?"
What's so special about them is that through them you exist. It's through them that we, the Second Generation, exist. And it's through our True Parents that we have the opportunity to become a part of one family under God. It is through the holy blessing, the gift that they bring to the world, that allows your parents to graft onto the original olive branch, our True Parents, and to have wonderful, beautiful children like yourselves.
As a mother myself, when I gaze into my children's eyes, I have a lot of longings and expectations. I want them to be great people. And your parents are no different. When they look at you, they want you to be great people. They don't want you to have to go through what they did. I certainly don't want my children to go through what I've gone through. I want them to have a better life, and I'm sure your parents want you to have a better life.
So when they wake you up early Sunday morning (and I encourage all of you to take part in coming together as a community in honor of our Heavenly Parent), some of you must be wondering what's so important. What's important about this is that when we come together like this as a community and celebrate the beauty of our community in each other, it reminds us why we're here. It reminds us that we are eternal sons and daughters of God, and it reminds us, just as the Little Angels are beautiful ambassadors to the world on behalf of Korea, that we have a chance to be beautiful ambassadors to the world on behalf of our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, who are with us today.
While watching the Little Angels I was reminded of a passage in the Bible, Zechariah 4:6, "Not by might nor by power but by my spirit." These beautiful children of Korea are becoming wonderful ambassadors of love and peace, not by might, not by power, but by bringing an expression of love, an expression of truth and beauty. That's what made their performance so profound.
For those of you taking part in the Il Shim graduation ceremony later on, this age is probably the most difficult time in your life in that while you're in middle school, a lot is changing in your life. You're not just going from elementary school and preparing for high school, but your bodies are changing. You're growing taller, being annoyed by acne, wondering whether you are attractive or strong, wondering what you are good at and what kind of a person you will be. Middle school is exactly that: You're in the middle of difficult time when there's a lot of static in the air.
I had an older brother who lived and breathed music. Wherever we were, he had to have something in his ears. When he was in the room, some music needed to be playing. In the car, he always had something on, the radio or his own tapes. When we would travel from East Garden to Gloucester or Provincetown, where Father spent a great deal of time in the summers, each time we went through different states my brother would be frantically trying to find a radio station, trying to get rid of the static on the radio to find a clear channel to listen to. Just as we'd near the border, the static would come back, and he would frantically look for another radio station to find that clear channel.
When you're in middle school, your life is like that. You're constantly being attacked by the static in the air. What is static? It's basically an electrical discharge in the atmosphere. What we're trying to do as receivers is get clear music into our system. But there's so much static, saying, "Look, you need to be cool. You need to hang out with only a certain type of people."
I remember being in middle school. I had a wonderful friend who didn't fit the mold of the people I would usually hang out with. One day one of my friends from the group said, "In Jin, you should not sit with that person at lunch." I said, "Why?" "Because that person doesn't look right." I said, "What do you mean, this person doesn't look right?" "That person doesn't dress right." I replied, "How does her dressing have anything to do with whether I can sit with her at lunch or not?" My friends said, "You can't be seen with that person because then you won't be cool."
I thought, "Why would I want to be cool?" This friend said to me, "We're friends because we're cool. You should not sit with that person because she is not cool." I said, "She's not cool just because of the clothes she wears?" She said, "Yes. You should not sit with that person." I remember in middle school I really had to think about this. Why can't you sit with the person you want to sit with? When you're having a stimulating conversation with someone, you want to sit with that person. But here was a group of my friends saying I could not sit with that person because then I would not be cool.
For me, that was huge bunch of static in the air. It took me a second or two to figure out what I wanted to do: whether being cool was so important, or wanting to be with that person to have a stimulating conversation was more important. Of course I opted to sit with the person because I enjoy a good conversation. But for that moment in time, there was static.
I don't know how many other times at school my friends would pressure me to do this or that. I would give them a simple answer, "I can't do that because my parents said I can't do that." There was a lot of static in the air, saying, "In Jin, be your own person. Be an adult. Make your own decisions. Do what I'm telling you to do. Make your own decisions. Don't listen to your parents. Listen to me."
This is the kind of pressure that friends put on each other. For young people who are trying to figure out who they are, or what they are, or the kind of people they want to be, friends wield a lot of power during that time. Your friends are saying, "Don't be a baby. Be an adult. Don't do what your parents always tell you. That's not cool. Disobey your parents. That's cool. Rebel." There's a lot of pressure to disobey your parents, or simply not follow your parents just because they're your parents, and to obey your friends because they're your friends and they're going to tell you what's cool and what's not.
If we really think about it, we don't want to obey our parents because that's not cool. We want to rebel against our parents. What our friends are telling us to do is to do exactly what our parents are asking us to do: Our friends are saying, "Obey me. Listen to me. Follow me," the very thing we don't want to do when we're looking at our parents.
With the wisdom of hindsight as we grow older, when we look back at our lives we realize how foolish those moments were and how seemingly important our friends were. Our friends become like God. Our friends take the place of our parents. Our peer group becomes like our God, and we end up obeying them. We end up doing things they encourage us to do, when truly the really cool thing to do in life, then and always, is to be your own person, to be who you are. The coolest thing in life is to be who you are. Who you are is eternal sons and daughters of God who share a common parent, our Heavenly Parent.
This Heavenly Parent gave us a wonderful life, an opportunity to practice living for the sake of others. And living for the sake of others really starts by understanding God as our Parent, our eternal Parent, and understanding our physical parents as God on earth. When we love our parents, we are loving God in heaven. What we aspire to with our Heavenly Parent is that we hope to have conversations with our Heavenly Parent; we hope to be embraced by our Heavenly Parent; we hope to be hugged by our Heavenly Parent.
But the wonderful thing about having parents in our lives is that we can have that physical conversation with our parents, and we can be embraced physically by our parents. We can be hugged, loved, and nurtured by our parents if we allow them to, if we realize that allowing our parents to love us is probably the coolest thing because when you allow your parents to love you, you're not letting the static in the environment tell you otherwise.
With my eldest son, we talk to each other as if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I say, "Hello, my love," and over the phone he says, "Hello, my love." I know for a fact that when Krista was first getting to know Preston, and every time he answered the phone, "Hello, my love," she did a double-take, wondering, "Who is this 'love'? I thought I was his love." But that love is his mother, and I love my son more than just as my son. I adore him almost the same way young people love celebrities, who are like God to them. My children are like God to me in that I experience God through them each and every day.
Father and Mother hold hands when they walk down the street. In their generation, it's unheard of for a man and woman to hold hands walking down the street. It's unheard of in the Asian community of my father's generation to lean over and kiss my mother because she sings so beautifully. But he does. He loves my mother, and he shows us how to love a wife. That's such a beautiful thing.
I feel that often in our communities the children expect a lot from the parents, but the parents expect a lot from their children, too. The parents want their children to be perfect. They want their children to be problem free. They want their children almost to be robots -- go to elementary school, get straight As, have a wonderful passion, be great in artistry, go on to the best universities, never fight with their siblings, always be respectful toward the parents, always clean up their room, put the vacuum away, do the dishes, take out the garbage, get a job, and work hard. This is what we expect from our children.
We don't expect our children to have emotional issues. We don't expect our children to experience some bumps on the road to self-discovery. We don't want our children to fall down and skin their knees spiritually or physically. There's a whole lot of expectation on both sides.
Whenever I think about the family, a beautiful gem of a movie comes to mind called Little Miss Sunshine. It's an indie type of movie, in that it's not a blockbuster or Terminator-type of action-packed movie. But it paints the picture of what a lot of families in the world are like. It starts off with a woman going to visit her brother in the hospital who is just recovering from a suicide attempt. It starts on this somber note, and slowly it unfolds to reveal what kind of family this woman has.
You realize the mother trying her best to raise her family: very busy about the home and about the things that she needs to be scheduling, taking the children to the dentist, and so on. You learn that the father is a motivational speaker. When I saw the father figure, I thought about our blessed children. Here is a father so good at presenting his PowerPoint, with his nine points that he gives all the time. Many of the blessed children are raised in a family like this, each father with his nine points, teaching about the Divine Principle. Many times we lectured our kids. We taught our kids via PowerPoint, and we were so busy showing the children our presentation of our knowledge that maybe we didn't really listen to what they were going through, or what they are capable of learning, or what they are capable of being taught.
In the movie, these are all good people in the sense that they're trying their best at life. You can see the father trying to hone his craft because he wants to be a success and be able to support his family. He's very hard at work, and his intention is good. But as the picture unfolds and you see where the kids are, you realize it's a highly dysfunctional family. Both the father and mother are very busy, but nobody is really in tune with what the children's needs are.
When they gather for a family dinner, a grandfather is there almost like comic relief. The parents are busy, and the son is busy in the process of discovering Nietzsche, so he has determined he is not going to speak. He sits there, not saying anything. He goes through the day not saying anything. That's how he makes his presence felt, by taking away the power of speech. The power of speech is important in the relationship between a parent and a child. So what does this child do? Simply takes it away, and in that way controls his environment because that environment is not amenable to what he needs in his life at that moment.
The son is very much a Gothic figure, dressed in black. His hair is black, and his pale face is juxtaposed against this, making you wonder where the colors are in his soul. He's very extreme, very black and white. That's what a lot of adolescents are when they're going through this difficult time. They're very black and white, and they have yet to discover the other colors of the rainbow or the wisdom that comes later in life from knowing there are many shades of gray in life to enjoy.
The daughter is a beautiful, effervescent girl in the midst of this family. The family suddenly gets excited because she gets word that she has become a finalist in a beauty contest for little girls. The family goes back and forth about the details of how they'll get there. The father has schedules, and the mother is busy, so who's going to take the child? In the end they all decide to go as a family to support this child.
It's a tale about the journey that this family takes because the daughter is a finalist in this competition. And you see how the family grows together, overcoming the obstacles in their path. One of their obstacles happens to be the van that they're in. The van has troubles, so there are some hysterics involved. It won't start without a running jump-start; everybody has to push the car and then jump in once it gets started. Or the car's horn breaks, so you have this van with a dysfunctional family rolling down the highway, honking at everybody at the most inopportune moments.
We in the audience are watching this family and laughing. I had to peel myself off the floor. The audience develops a certain bond with this family because although they're so weird and so dysfunctional, and yet, very weirdly, like us many times, we can see pockets of what we are like in these people.
They finally arrive at the beauty competition. All these little girls are dressed up like Barbie. They're programmed and taught to sing like an adult, to dance like an adult, to act gracefully. But the daughter is anything but the typical beauty pageant type. She's not thin, not what you would call glamorous, but beautiful in her own way. She's very different.
The other contestants are dressed up in these frou-frou frocks, and she comes out wearing a man's suit. Even in that regard she's very different. But as dysfunctional as her family is, just the fact that she has her whole family there with her -- though she's the only one wearing a tie and a suit, and the other girls are wearing dresses, and she feels unsure -- when she gazes out into the audience and sees her parents, then she's confident once again.
She regains her composure, and after the other girls do their numbers, she goes out and does her dance. Her number was choreographed by her grandfather, who passed away during this trip. When the music starts and she begins dancing, you realize that the choreography the grandfather prepared for her to perform at the pageant is a strip-tease dance. The music begins, the girl comes out, and she so confidently starts taking off her tie, whirling her jacket before she flings it into the air. While the other girls before her were doing very proper dances, she comes out and starts reaching like an animal, like this, over the audience.
The audience is absolutely shocked, and the judges are horrified, looking at each other as if to say, "Who is going to get this girl off the stage?" No one knows what to do, and she keeps on going because this is the dance that her grandfather taught her and she is going to deliver it properly. She's going, going, going, grabbing for the judges, for the audience, and everyone is aghast. Finally her family realizes what's going on. The father, who is so into the proper way of doing things, realizes that his daughter is in an awkward moment, gets up on stage, makes a total fool of himself, and starts dancing along with her. The other members of the family, including the suicidal uncle, get up on stage. All the members of her family end up on stage, making total fools of themselves. It's a common denominator of, "We are a family and we're going to stick together. As weird as these contestants might think we are, we're not going to let our child do this alone. We're going to do it together."
The next scene is the whole family sitting at the police station; the competition organizers are seen through the glass door, talking animatedly, pointing at them. The family just sits there in a somber way. The pageant organizer comes out and says, "You are forbidden to ever enter a beauty competition in this state." And the family is totally fine with that. Then off they go.
At that moment, of course, it's funny to think that a young child intends to perform some strip-tease choreography at a beauty pageant competition for little girls. But the family rallied around her, not letting her fall flat on her face, and made fools of themselves. They made it a family event. In that moment, this dysfunctional family actually becomes functional because then they realize how much they mean to each other, how much they love each other.
Toward the end of the movie the advocate of the new-founded Nietzsche religion goes through a process. During the journey home, the family gets into a bit of a brawl, and he finally erupts, running out of the van, shouting obscenities to his parents. What does the mother do? She wants to reach out to this boy, so she follows him to where he's sitting by the side of the road, refusing to get back in the van. She tries to talk to him, but nothing is going in. Again, here is a boy who has given up on words. But out of his anger explodes a waterfall of negative words toward his parents. But his parents come back, trying to comfort him and redirect him with words, and nothing is going in.
The mother, becoming despondent and realizing she cannot reach this boy, slowly walks back to the car. After some time, the little sister, little Miss Sunshine, slowly walks over to her brother. She doesn't say a thing but sits next to him, leans into him, and puts her head on his shoulder. That simple act of touch (again, the healing power of the human touch) is what this adolescent boy needed. He did not need words. He did not need to be taught. He did not need to be educated or redirected.
Often what a child or adolescent is asking for when they rebel is that simple power of the healing touch of a parent or a loved one. When her head touched his shoulder, that simple gesture totally melted all his anger, all his frustration, all the walls that he built up around himself. You see him slowly turn his head toward her, "listening" to that gesture much, much more powerfully than to any words. And he slowly picks her up and carries her back to the family van.
That simple visual imagery is profound. Many times we parents are so frustrated, so overcome with grief because we just do not know how to reach our teenage children. We assault them with a barrage of words: maybe not well-chosen words like "I love you; I want you; I need you in my life." Often we give them a Niagara Falls of what we want to convey, and we wonder why nothing goes in.
In a poignant way this movie sends a message to parents that words are incredibly important. They are vehicles of emotion, but often we put our words in overdrive and therefore nothing goes in. When we find ourselves having overdriven over our children, then the most effective way of reaching out is that simple touch, walking up behind them and giving them a big hug without saying anything. Or holding their hand just to let them know that we're there and we're going to love them, no matter what. We're going to be there for them, no matter what. Just as we ourselves, when we were young, went through a period of driving through different states, constantly fidgeting with the radio, trying to get the static out of our lives so we can hear that pure, clear music, let's give our children the space so they can do the same.
The most important message we can give to our children is to let them know it doesn't matter how many states they drive through, or how much static they might encounter on that drive. "We, your father and mother and family, will always be there for you. We will never go away. Once we are put together as a family, we will always be a family. We may go in different directions, we may do different things, but we will always be there for you."
As you go through your growth period, the only thing that your parents would like to ask you to realize about yourselves is: "You may not realize how beautiful and great you are. You may not realize that you're an incredible butterfly that will take flight one day. You might be so unsure of ourselves, so insecure, so unconfident because your bodies are growing in strange ways that you do not understand and lots of changes are taking place that make you feel confused."
But if we can maintain a clear channel to God and our True Parents, they will help us be that great person. We have to be patient with ourselves. There's no need to be an adult when you are 12 or 13. Enjoy being 12 and 13. The time will never come again. Enjoy being 14, 15, or 16. You have your whole life ahead of you to do everything you want to do. You don't need it now. You don't need it immediately. There is beauty in waiting for something wonderful.
Part of the reason your family dragged you here this morning is because the beauty of the Il Shim ceremony is that it celebrates the preparation for the blessing. The blessing is so beautiful in that there's nothing more romantic than to dream about finding that eternal partner whom you will love and who's going to love you as a daughter or a son of God, not as a body part, not just wanting to be with you because you're cool. That person is making a commitment to God, humanity, and you because he or she realizes how incredibly valuable you are.
You all are like the rough-cut diamonds of rare beauty that need time to be made into a brilliant gem that is set in a beautiful ring that symbolizes eternity. There is something beautiful about something eternal and the word forever. The other people who become master daters by the time they graduate from high school can never really have a meaningful relationship because they've been trained their whole life to become great daters but not a great husband or a great wife. They have not been trained to be great parents. And people wonder why the world has so many problems!
The Il Shim ceremony is a preparation for a wonderful gift that you will have in the future, called the blessing. Having this permission from God to love someone eternally is a beautiful thing. It's a romantic thing as we move forward as a community, looking forward to the Third and Fourth Generations to come.
One of the things that we need to be vigilant about is not just teaching or professing to the world the virtues of our community but really celebrating everything we believe in and doing what we're talking about. Don't come to church just to hear me speak. You know exactly what you need to do. I'm not here to teach. I am simply here to remind all of you how precious and how awesome each and every one of you are. I am here to remind you that you are the eternal sons and daughters of God, that you have infinite and precious value.
The greatest gift you can give to each other is the gift of love. How wonderful would it be to save this love for somebody special? That's the only thing your parents are encouraging you to do. They've lived a little bit more than you; they've experienced a little bit more than you. They've probably gone through a lot of heartache and they want you to have a life that's better, that's more beautiful and meaningful.
So love your parents. Give your parents their due respect because it's through them that you are who you are. You are blessed children because of them, because of their sacrifice, because they found True Parents. Live your lives and honor them.
Also, the parents, please give your children a little room to grow. Please be a great support system, but at the same time give them a little room to grow. Give them a little room to explore and to ask questions while they have you guiding them every step of the way. Don't be so hard on them because life is not that easy for kids. We had our difficulties, but for their generation, it's pretty tough out there. Perhaps we can listen. Perhaps we can practice the healing art of touch more. As we articulate how much we love and care about them and as we try our best to guide them through difficult moments in our lives, perhaps the movie Little Miss Sunshine can remind us that sometimes a lot more is said by our gestures and actions.
If we can keep these things in mind and allow each one of us, young and old, to find ourselves to be those special people, I think we can be a really awesome movement. We need to know that we are incredibly lucky to have our True Parents here. As our True Parents continue onward in trying to bring one family under God, our movement is going through a lot of transitional phases and difficulties, maybe with some points of confusion. But the most important thing we need to realize is the importance and centrality of our True Parents, especially how they have passed the baton to the youngest son of the family, Hyung Jin, as the spiritual head of the movement.
We need to understand that our True Parents are not being replaced by another or a younger true parents, Hyung Jin's couple. We need to understand that the concept of True Parents is eternal, just like the concept of God is eternal. It is the job of the children, those of us in the True Family, to live our lives in honor of our True Parents so that we can become parents of our own. But there is one and only one True Parents. We need to understand very clearly that when Father talks about creating this one family under God, it will not be accomplished by any of the service organizations that exist in our church. It will not be done by CARP, by the Women's Federation, by Universal Peace Federation or Global Peace Festival. It will not be done by American Clergy Leadership Conference. All these organizations want to practice living for the sake of others, and they are service organizations. But we will not save the world through service alone.
The way our True Parents are going to save the world is through the process and the gift of the holy blessing. Only our True Parents have that right, the privilege, and the honor of administering the holy blessing, and that is why, for the first time in our lives, we can have true love, true life, and true lineage. That's why our True Parents are incredibly important. That's why we are not just a movement. The sacrament of marriage is something that belongs to a church.
A lot of people are saying, "We don't need the church. All we need is a service organization. We don't need tradition." But our tradition is a heavenly tradition, and our tradition is one of True Parents in that here we are to substantiate true love, true life, and true lineage. Lineage is what was missing when Jesus was crucified 2,000 years ago. And it is lineage that our True Parents have come to share with the rest of the world. It is through the lineage that we become one family under God. We become one family not by just doing good works. We become one family through marriage, brothers and sisters. Krista became a member of my family not just because she was doing good works for Lovin' Life Ministry as a volunteer. She became a part of my family through marriage.
The beauty of the holy blessing, and the reason why international blessings are such an integral part of the peace-building process, is because that's how we become one family under God. It encompasses all the diverse cultures, all the different religions, all the different traditions. It is through marriage and through the power and the digestive process of love that allows the world to exist as one family. That is why we need our True Parents.
As important as it is to develop our own individual relationship with God in heaven, it is only the original olive branch that allows us to have the opportunity to substantiate true lineage. That's why we cannot do without True Parents. That's why our True Parents, when they anointed the youngest son to continue making the true holy blessing available to the world, chose someone from a religious background. It has to be somebody who represents the church, who represents the tradition, who is going to administer the holy blessing continually, even if our True Parents are not here.
That is the wisdom in why our True Father has chosen the youngest son as the center of the family and as the spiritual head. He comes with seven years of spiritual dedication and a foundation in being the kind of minister that is going to usher in a new millennium of peace. His character is not one of might or power, but it's one of the spirit. It's one that talks, expresses, and shares about truth, love, and beauty, and that's what we need in order to have a peaceful world.
Brothers and sisters, we need to understand that our True Parents will guide us until their last breath and will guide us even more effectively in the other world. And through their representative, who is the youngest son of the family, we will come to substantiate this true world of peace that we're talking about.
So do not be confused. Let us be clear that as we continue to do great work, and as ACLC continues to do great work with the ministers, and as UPF and GPF continue to do great work through service, and as CARP continues to do great work by becoming ambassadors for our True Parents and by providing service, really living for the sake of others on campus, let us not be confused about why our True Parents and why our Unification Church and why being a Unificationist are probably the coolest things around. For the first time in history we have the breaking news in our True Parents, and we have a chance to experience in the flesh what it's like to have the wonderful family that God wanted all along.
So be patient and give yourself room to grow. Look forward to that beautiful day when you will become a beautiful butterfly. But in the meantime, let's all work on ourselves. Instead of being a community that focuses on what we're doing wrong, how wonderful would it be if we become a community where we complement each other's strengths and where we talk about how wonderful it is to have the other in our lives? There is nothing greater than having won the lottery of living at the same time as our True Parents, brothers and sisters. So do not be afraid. Do not be confused. The future is in great hands. The young people who are sitting here, we need to know that we have an awesome future, we need to be proud Unificationists, and we need to know why -- because we are part of this movement and of a tradition that is something really cool.
So God bless, and have a wonderful Sunday.
1: And the angel who talked with me came again, and waked me, like a man that is wakened out of his sleep.
2: And he said to me, "What do you see?" I said, "I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps which are on the top of it.
3: And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left."
4: And I said to the angel who talked with me, "What are these, my lord?"
5: Then the angel who talked with me answered me, "Do you not know what these are?" I said, "No, my lord."
6: Then he said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerub'babel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts.
7: What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerub'babel you shall become a plain; and he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of `Grace, grace to it!'"
8: Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
9: "The hands of Zerub'babel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you.
10: For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerub'babel. "These seven are the eyes of the LORD, which range through the whole earth."
11: Then I said to him, "What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?"
12: And a second time I said to him, "What are these two branches of the olive trees, which are beside the two golden pipes from which the oil is poured out?"
13: He said to me, "Do you not know what these are?" I said, "No, my lord."
14: Then he said, "These are the two anointed who stand by the Lord of the whole earth."